Most shopping malls or shopping centres may be open to the public for many hours each day, if not being always open for public access. The shopping malls and centres are frequented by patrons and customers of the stores located in them, and quite often those patrons and customers may attend at the shopping mall or centre in family groupings.
Often, the parents of children who accompany them may wish to find a location at which their children may safely amuse themselves for a few moments while the parent rests, has a cup of coffee, or visits a nearby store. Many parents are reluctant for their children to attend at video arcades, especially when those children are pre-teenagers, but may have no reluctance to permit the children to spend a few moments and a few small coins watching cartoons or other interesting or entertaining video programs.
There are very many short cartoon programs, and other moving picture programs, which are in the public domain or which can be licensed for commercial exhibition quite inexpensively. Such programs may range in playing length from three or four minutes up to as much as eight or ten minutes.
For many years, there have been available in shopping malls or shopping centres small kiosks operated by independent operators, or in some instances operated by the owners or managers of the shopping malls and the like, in which endless loops of 8 mm film may be placed in a projector to be activated by a coin operated switch. However, such film projectors and the program material on the films have very poor quality, usually no sound, and are subject to frequent breakdown of the projector or breakage of the film. Moreover, in some instances rather than an endless loop of film being used, a film may be wound on to a large reel, and operated by a timer. In such installations, placing a coin into a coin operated switch to begin operation of the film projector might result in the last few seconds of one program and the first two or three minutes of the next cartoon program, a circumstance which is not desirable and which leads to unhappy patrons. Moreover, those projectors require constant supervision, and rewinding of the film when it reaches its end.
Because of the availability of better quality video program material, either in the public domain or inexpensively, and because a video tape playing device of a video tape player and a television monitor would normally result in better quality viewing, an opportunity arises for placement of coin operated video machines in shopping malls and centres instead of the old film projectors, with much better quality program material and much better quality viewing for patrons. The present invention recognizes those opportunities, and provides for a coin operated video machine that can be obtained at relatively low capital costs but which can provide significant returns on investment because it is essentially maintenance free. Indeed, the only maintenance may be the usual preventive maintenance, clearance of coin boxes and checking counters, and changing video tapes to provide fresh program material for each site at which a coin operated video machine is located.
It is not, however, simply a case of recording a few programs, dropping the tape into a video tape player, connecting the video tape player to a television, and providing some kind of coin operated switch to start playback operations. To begin with, an ordinary tape player would require always to be set in its play mode, which probably cannot be accomplished without applying a jumper inside the device. If that occurs, however, an ordinary video tape player is incapable of rewinding the video tape if its control panel is constantly set in a play position. Still further, means must be provided to initiate operation, at full speed, and at the same time ensure that the television monitor is turned on and warmed up so as to begin to show the video program at the instant when the tape moves through the tape transport or tape playing mechanism of the tape player. Thus, much more specific requirements are made, especially in respect of the nature of the video tape player and the video tape which will be placed in it, in order to meet the operating characteristics of coin operated video machines of the present invention, as discussed above.
For example, all control of the play operation of the coin operated video machine must come from actuation of the coin operated switch; however, rewind operation of the video tape to place it back at its beginning so as to replay the program material that has been pre-recorded on it, is not permitted to be under the control of the coin operated switch. To do so would result in an unacceptable delay between actuation of a coin operated switch and the beginning of video play, if the patron of the machine has first to wait for the tape to be rewound.
Still further, means must be provided whereby each time a pre-recorded video program reaches its end, the video machine must recognize that event, so that the tape player will stop its operation and be placed into a rest or stop mode, ready to once again enter its play mode upon actuation of the coin operated switch.
In an improvement of the present invention, it is recognized that when a video tape of, for example, VHS format is capable of having recorded thereon 60 minutes or 90 minutes of much as 6 hours of pre-recorded program material (when replayed at the lowest tape speed), there may be a significant period of 3 or 5 minutes, or more, during which the video tape must be rewound to its beginning or front end. If a shorter tape is used, the rewind period is shorter, but is encountered much more frequently. Thus, it is desirable for means to be provided that preclude the coin operated video machine from operating during its rewind mode--so as to ensure full rewind of the video tape--and an auxiliary video program source may be provided so as at least to provide some video viewing on the monitor during tape rewind. Alternatives which make such provisions are discussed below.
Moreover, it may be desirable for an alternate video source to provide advertising opportunities for the merchants in a shopping mall or centre, or public service announcements and the like. Thus, when a patron of the video machine is not occupying its surrounding kiosk to the exclusion of all other persons, the alternate video source operates. This arrangement is also provided for, as discussed below.
Certain combined video monitor and video tape player machines are available on the market, which are used very often by marketing consultants at trade shows, and in such surroundings as department stores, where a specific (usually short) promotional video tape may continuously be played to promote a certain product. Other circumstances include the simple presentation of an ongoing video recording of an otherwise incessant program source such as a seascape or a tank of tropical fish. In the first instance, a particular promotional program may be recorded and placed in the tape player mechanism of the machine, and the machine set so that at the end of the promotional pre-recorded segment a non-program segment is encountered; and the non-program segment immediately puts the tape playing mechanism in rewind mode so that the video tape rewinds to its beginning and the program material is re-played. A typical circumstance may be the promotion of a new perfume, for example.
In the other mode of playback possible in these commercially available machines, a control is set so that when the end of the tape is reached, the tape rewinds and begins to re-play the program material once again. A typical circumstance may be where a video tape recording of a movie is being promoted and the movie continues simply to be re-played, or where a restful view such as a seascape or tropical fish tank may be required for any reason.
A typical machine of the sort described above, having all of the limitations noted above, is available and identified as PANASONIC (TM) model AG-500. However, that machine is not capable of being operated in the manner described above to play sequential video program material that has been pre-recorded seriatim on a video tape, without very extensive modifications. Test machines in keeping with the present invention have been manufactured from those machines noted immediately above, with very extensive modifications, so as to operate in keeping with the above description. Commercial machines according to the present invention are more fully discussed hereafter.